Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I would like to know if only miners can fork the BTC blockchain by themselves or if they need to have user support to do so.

Because miners and users don't have the same interrest regarding bitcoin.

thanks

It's a question of resources. You need to have enough computational power to do a fork.
Typically, miners agree on doing a fork and then they use their combined power to mine new blocks on the new fork.
If an accumulation of users can offer a sufficient hashrate, that might be possible as well.

Anyone can initiate a fork. If a user decides to have a fork, they need enough hashpower to sustain the fork. You can however, modify the consensus rules such that the difficulty can be decreased after a period of time without a block. You don't have to have that much hashpower. The user can easily change rules such that it doesn't comply with the protocol rules in Bitcoin.

Its way easier for miners to initiate a fork but they would still require the user's support if they want the coin to succeed.

If you're talking about creating an alt-coin, it is probably the easiest.

Anyone who creates a fork can simply drop the difficulty of the first block in their fork so that they are able to mine it themselves. In fact, with a hard fork, anything can happen because you can change whatever rules you want in a hard fork.

Creating a fork is easy.  Anybody can do it with just a little bit of effort.

Getting other people (merchants, exchanges, miners, users, etc) to use your fork is the hard part.  If your fork is backed up by a lot of hash power, then you have a better chance of convincing other people to actually use it.

Let's say miners want to increase the 16 millions BTC limit. User don't want obviously. what happens?

Miners create software that allows larger block reward.
Miners run that software.

Users refuse to run that software.
Merchants refuse to run that software.
Exchanges refuse to run that software.

Miners create blocks and get a useless block reward that they can't spend and they can't exchange.  Miners spend millions of dollars on equipment and electricity, and earn $0. Miners can't afford to pay their bills. Miners go out of business.

Meanwhile, users, and merchants and exchanges buy all the mining equipment that gets sold by the bankruptcy courts when the miners go out of business.  Users and Merchants and Exchanges become miners, mining the original blockchain that does not have an increased limit.

Bitcoin continues, and stupid people (miners that tried to change the limit) lose money.

I wish the cryptocurrency system worked in a way that hard forks would not be possible. Why the hard fork and not just have a new coin not related to any previous.

thanks for this information, this is reallt educating and enlighting. Previously i assume that whales or bigtime holders are the one who's deciding to do the forks. Thank you again.

The beauty of Bitcoin, and decentralize networks is that most of times, doesn't matter who decides what. What really matters is what the crowd will use.

It may be that way because a miner bitcoin aims to get as much bitcoin for commercial purposes (resold)
Unlike the case with users who use bitcoin for their transaction needs

Almost the same question I wanted to ask.
I think why there should be bitcoin cash ?
Who is the originator of bitcoin cash actually ?
What are the miners who want the bitcoin cash ?

Without a hard fork, the rules that the protocol current has can never be changed. If an exploit is somehow discovered, it would not be possible to fix it since some of the rules of the network cannot be changed without a hard fork.

If you were to have a hard fork and not allow users to choose what they want, that would just be depriving them of their rights. They should be able to support whichever coin that they choose. Its not possible for everyone to agree on something.

this how the fork was conceptualized:

-Developers/programmers submit proposals like BIP or Bitcoin Improvement Proposal such proposals are blockchain scaling or enhancing blockchain network that fixes some problems like block size or the transaction processing time.
-Miners, investors,co-developers and other users representative do brainstorming if that proposal would benefit the future enhancement of the Bitcoin ecosystem if the initiator from the proposals are not quite impressive a counter proposal would arise.
-Voting would begin if which party they are in favor the proposal or the counter proposal, if things didn't settle, they seek legal matters and advises
- if both parties didn't agree then a chain split would come.
- a new crypto currency announces and ask support, capitalization and investment from other parties like users,merchants,traders,exchanges.
- fork launches and waiting and praying and hoping that their new coin will succeed if it fails then go back to the drawing board.

Thank you for the explanation. On the other hand I would like to brig to this community's attention the following two articles about hard fork segwit and bicoin cash.
  
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@modprobe/i-looked-into-segwit-and-here-s-what-i-saw
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@belerophon/the-black-swan-that-could-turn-bitcoin-upside-down

As I know anyone who want can change soft fork for yourself